In 1932, Guinness moved its headquarters to London after the Irish Free State's Control of Manufactures Act. The move reflected the firm's complex identity as Irish, British, imperial, and global. Guinness continued to dominate stout markets while adapting to new national borders.

The move helps contextualise literary treatments of Guinness as both Irish symbol and multinational commodity. For readers of Yeats, Joyce, and later Irish poets, it shows how drink, nationalism, capital, and cultural identity could pull in different directions.